Google announced five changes to AI Overviews and AI Mode on October 15, 2026, aimed at making links and publisher profiles easier to find. The features have different rollout stages, and the announcement reports no measured publisher-traffic result.
How Google is changing links in AI Search
In its October 15 announcement, Google described five updates:
- Inline links: Google said it was launching changes to place links higher in AI responses more often.
- Official destinations: Google is testing a section near the top of some responses with one or two relevant official websites and an explanation of why each may help.
- Timely news carousels: Google said rollout was starting in additional locations and languages. The carousels highlight users’ Preferred Sources and appear for a wider range of queries.
- Related articles: Links at the end of some AI responses are becoming more prominent and clickable, with thumbnails. Google gave no rollout schedule for this change.
- Creator and publisher profiles: Testing began during the week of October 15 for clickable names on video results in AI Mode. Those names link to Search profiles.
Google’s interface illustration shows an AI Overview with two news cards side by side, followed by more search results.
The carousel is one way Google plans to give timely articles and selected sources more visibility. Its rollout was described as expanding to additional locations and languages, rather than as a simultaneous launch everywhere.
What Google’s Preferred Sources figure counts
Google said the number of people using Preferred Sources had grown more than sevenfold since the beginning of 2026. The figure counts users of the feature, not links or clicks.
That adoption figure describes use of a source-selection feature. It does not measure whether people visit publishers after seeing links in an AI response.
Link presence and clicks are different measures
Peec AI data reported by Search Engine Roundtable put the daily average share of AI Overviews containing an external link in answer text at 26.2% on September 20, 2026. That is a measure of link presence. Search Engine Roundtable reporter Barry Schwartz disclosed a small investment in Peec AI.
A Pew Research Center analysis of Google searches conducted in March 2025, as reported by 9to5Google, found that 1% of searches with an AI summary resulted in a click on a link inside the summary. A search-result link was clicked in 8% of searches with an AI summary, compared with 15% of searches without one. Google disputed the study’s methodology and the representativeness of its query set.
Google’s October announcement describes changes to link placement and profiles; the September link-presence measure and March 2025 click findings do not measure publisher visits after those changes.
Related links with thumbnails
Google’s interface illustration groups related publisher links, short descriptions and thumbnails in a “Dive Deeper” section.
